First Impressions Don’t Always Tell the Whole Story!

foreign guess what I have today smoker it doesn't really work very well but still smoke so now I'm going through the yard and assessing and shaking that one is an obvious dead out lots of bees but nothing going on down there this one involved a little bit more inspection box of bees it was flagged and they're kind of organizing themselves to the point where it's like ah there probably should be something going on down there but there isn't I'm gonna go through again and just make sure there isn't a virgin that's just about to start laying so here's two colonies that are flagged tagged I mean tagged which means I've had a queen cell dropped in here first or second week of August so they should be laying by now if not exhibiting a broodeness I do not see any organization at all I would put my money on this being a queenless unit first off there's bar some bees sparse on bees doesn't really mean they're Queen rate or not but it does mean that if there's no coin in there those bees are probably drifted away somewhere else and I've had this open for about 10 seconds now and I'm not seeing any cluster over top of anywhere there is no cluster here there just to spread out they're just kind of random let's take a look at the one beside here [Music] kind of seeing the same thing there's not a lot of bees in here they could use a boost but already within seconds I'm seeing the definition of a cluster right here so let's go down into that one and we'll go down into this one to see if what I'm seeing holds true I can hear these bees they sound very unsettled I can hear a hum to the nest a hum of discontentment I shouldn't be shaking them out right away until I have fully assessed the situation but I kind of know I mean it's the writing is on the wall scattered nothing in there well son I'm wrong son I am wrong you know I am wrong that was a good little laying pattern I seen there now hopefully I didn't Shake That Queen out we're gonna have to getting a perfect little nest look at that oh my goodness so now I gotta see if I can do an ID here on the queen Mr know-it-all beekeeper trying to show off everything he knows and the bees have a way of humbling that nature ah just beautiful uh where is she where is she where is she she's probably in the grass looks like the first my first impressions of this Nest was absolutely totally wrong they need bees they just didn't show themselves I'm gonna have to go searching the grass there chances of me shaking her out was pretty slim because I gotta find her though easier if I just found her and I can put them back together damn Nations anyways this is way more disturbance than I like to give colonies through this check way more disturbance getting away with it because it's first thing in the morning and there is virtually no rubbing pressure right now but if these bees were out scouring the area they'd focus in on this nest and all my attention I'm putting in here and I could be jeopardizing just just the survival of this nest so I'm gonna have to close them up I think even if I don't find her and just assume that she's in here could be on the sidewall now or she could be in the grass ah there she is right there my little beauty I'm gonna close this Nest up treatment [Music] okay and we're gonna put these ones in and mark them two thousand twenty three and as one of our own [Music] syrup and now I'll drop into the anonymity of my operation and first I'm going to give them a boost so that Colony over there that I've searched through and I've convinced myself that they're queenless and there's probably nothing going on in there I'm going to take some of those bees and shake them in front of this Colony just to give them a bee boost the reason that's going to work is because what's likely what likely has gone on within this nest is and there's a lot of young bees here I'll show you there's going to be bees hit the grass and do nothing but walk for you to fly away and we're going to see a mass of bees just kind of walk aimlessly around and cling on to anything they can because now they're lost these are all young bees that have emerged Without a Queen present because maybe what's happened here is the queen got up through the excluder with a developed rudeness down below she started making up on top occasionally I do pull Queens into the honey house I probably did it ended up in the honey house and these bees were left with a mature brood Nest that has emerged that makes it look like a healthy box of bees but nothing is going on because they couldn't start anything up because they had nothing young enough to develop another queen happens from time to time so I'm going to take these bees and I'm going to provide this calling over here with a bit of a boost see the young bees there they're crawling look at that and they smell that Queen and they're walking directly into that entrance right now see that that also tells me these bees have nothing going on within that mess because they are desperate for a queen so anyway that's just a little bit of what I'm that's kind of what I look for when I'm going down and in how do I know that these ones don't have a virgin running around well we could I've searched and I found nothing no evidence of anything no evidence of even when you have a they've had lots of time to fix themselves up right they've been flagged they've been flagged three weeks when we pulled this yard three and a half weeks ago if there was a virgin going on down in here at that time because I flagged them because there's no brood or there is a nest that's not developing that virgin should have taken over by now and they should be making space within that Nest to allow that clean to start laying and I'll show you there's none of that going on um you can almost see a nest that is being prepared for a queen to lay in this one's very full pulling so that's a bad example same with this that's another sign when they just pack things they bring it in [Music] see just a random nature of bringing the pollen in Here There and Everywhere The Nest the organizing nature of the nest isn't forcing them to manage those resources properly look at all those young bees and make use of those so let's dig into the one beside it which I called Queen right because of my external observation and see if I'm correct about that that's where I'm showing nothing frames showing a bit of an organized nature but that might be just because I want this Nest to be Queen right this next frame should tell me a lot oh here we go we have a little Nest here and we have eggs [Music] yep yep we have a developing Nest let's see how big it is to me it looks like it goes out to that frame three frames over I probably won't dig that far in nothing expected oh yeah I guess it's pretty decent for your little Cheyenne bees so I'm going to take the rest of that other colony that I'm shaking out and tap it beside this Nest here I don't want to overwhelm these nests with a like a boost like that because then you risk the newbies coming in and just overwhelming the new Queen because they're so excited ah finally the queen and they just kind of mull her to death okay I'll get the treatment on this one first [Music] foreign [Music] goes to plan those bees will merge they will assimilate into these new boxes hopefully the bees within the nest is able to protect the queen from that sudden invasion of these new foreign bees just looking for Queen substance I'm hoping that's what this Fanning means just the you know the acknowledgment of the new home look look guys here's a new home attract all these bees in and I just hope they don't overwhelm The Nest that's the risk you run like this one over here I shook out because it was hopelessly queenless drift over the one beside and I just hope that they don't overwhelm but for the most part these nests are good because they are a box of these corner to corner and they will no doubt have the the Manpower should you say to build to protect the nest hopefully allow those new workers into the nest thank you foreign

Channel: a Canadian Beekeeper’s Blog

Views: 29,813

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Id: BFZgOpJDgK0

Length: 17min 37sec (1057 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 13 2023